


It is not of import

by Leizu



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Other, Post-Purgatory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-12
Updated: 2012-11-12
Packaged: 2017-11-18 12:43:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/561184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leizu/pseuds/Leizu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel and Dean get out of Purgatory, but when Castiel looks around, he can't find Dean. O/S, mostly a bit of fun. Inspired by this post: http://itisnotofimport.tumblr.com/post/34076569185/i-really-wish-the-cas-riding-dean-out-of</p>
            </blockquote>





	It is not of import

Castiel opened his eyes tentatively. He hoped that his and Dean's attempt to leave Purgatory had been successful. As he looked around, he saw that he was back on Earth, but he couldn't see or sense Dean anywhere. He turned, confused; but there was nothing living in his immediate vicinity. Suppressing his feeling of panic, he attempted to fly himself to Bobby's house (assuming that was where Sam would be, and that the first thing Dean would do would be to find Sam), but nothing happened. He could feel his wings stretching out behind him, but they didn't seem to be working properly. He would have to test out some of his other powers later; for now, he needed to get to a phone.

He'd been walking for around two hours when he encountered a road cutting through the forest. Although he couldn't hear any cars, he figured that it would be easier to find help if he kept to the road, so he turned right and started walking. Twenty minutes later, he encountered a truck going in the opposite direction, and the man driving it pulled over when Castiel waved.

"You alright, son?" asked the man, as he got out of the car.

"I appear to be lost," replied Castiel, but there was something odd about the way his voice sounded. He thought it might have something to do with his angelic powers being suppressed. "How far is it to the nearest town?"

"'Bout an hour driving. I'm headed there now, if you need a ride?"

"Yes, thank you," said Castiel, moving over to the passenger side door. As he reached for the handle, he caught sight of his reflection and stared. His face was covered in dirt; his hair and beard were slightly matted with blood, and Dean's green eyes regarded him with surprise. Quickly, he looked down at his clothes and found that he was wearing Dean's. He then realised that it wasn't just the clothes, he was _wearing Dean_. Regaining his composure, he got into the truck without saying a word.

***

An hour later, he was stood outside a phone booth, torn. He knew he needed to contact Sam so that he could find his vessel- he suspected that his powers weren't working because Dean wasn't his true vessel. He also needed to try and work out what had happened to Dean. He couldn't feel his presence inside his head. He was clearly, therefore, going to need Sam's help; but he thought that Sam would most likely be less than thrilled with the fact that Castiel was using his older brother as a meat suit. Eventually, he made a decision: he wouldn't let Sam know he wasn't Dean. He was confident that he knew Dean well enough to get away with it until they could work out what had happened. He inserted the requisite coins into the machine and dialled.

"Hey, it's Sam; leave a message."

"Uh, hey Sa-Sammy, it's me. I'm stuck in Issaquah, near Seattle and Cas is missing. You need to come get me and we'll try and find Cas together. Bye." As Castiel hung up, he felt supremely proud of himself. He thought that was an excellent impression of Dean- he'd even remembered that Dean sometimes called his brother Sammy when he was being affectionate. This was going to be easier than he'd thought.

***

Three days later, Sam pulled up outside the motel Castiel had been staying in and frantically got out of the car to seek out his brother. Castiel had been worrying about this moment. After he'd initially convinced Sam, it would be fine- Dean's taciturn nature would come in handy- but he initial meeting would be the hardest.

Castiel opened the door and stood inside the frame, looking at Sam. Sam practically ran over, and Castiel smiled- it was good to see Sam again, and his love for his older brother was something Castiel had always admired in him. Sam was so huge that he completely enveloped Castiel when he hugged him tight in greeting.

"Dean!" Sam said, ecstatic- his joy making Castiel feel a little guilty for lying to him.

"Sammy," he replied, not knowing what else to say. They moved back from the hug and regarded each other, Castiel carefully mirroring Sam's actions.

"I brought pie," said Sam, rushing out his words. Castiel laughed.

"Ah, pie; my favourite dessert," he said, looking up at Sam with amusement. Bringing food was a very human reaction when they didn't know what else to do. Sam cocked his head to one side and narrowed his eyes a little.

"You don't just eat it for dessert, though..."

"Of course," said Castiel, cursing his first slip-up, "I just haven't eaten food in a long time." This answer seemed to satisfy Sam, and he picked up a carrier bag and brought it inside. While Sam's back was turned, Castiel quickly produced a bottle of holy water and a silver knife, sneaking up behind Sam. Rapidly, he threw the water over Sam's head, grabbed Sam's free left hand and made a small incision in the palm. As Sam turned, he mirrored the cut in his own hand and tipped the rest of the water on his face. He gave Sam an apologetic smile.

"Had to be sure." Sam nodded in agreement.

Castiel ate the pie in silence, attempting to copy Dean's less-than-sohpisticated table manners. If Sam noticed anything off, he didn't mention it. Castiel had noticed that since coming back from Purgatory, he required food and sleep in the same way as humans; though not as often. He finished the pie and pushed the empty box away.

"I've been trying to work out how we could have become separated upon leaving Purgatory, but thus far I can't think of any reason," said Castiel, breaking the silence. "Have you had time to do any research?" Sam laughed.

"Sure, Dean, in between driving from Ohio to Seattle, eating, and sleeping, I also had enough time to figure out where your angel boyfriend could have got to." Castiel looked down, feeling guilty again. Sam stretched out his hand across the table kindly. "Dean, I was joking. I haven't had time to research, but we can start now. I know you're worried." Castiel smiled.

"Thanks, Sammy."

***

A short while later, Castiel was fidgeting in his seat, attempting to impersonate Dean's usual relaxed position but finding it difficult. Sam was sat across from him, typing occasionally on his laptop, hoping to find some clues that would lead them to Dean. After around an hour, Sam sat up excitedly, and gestured for Castiel to join him.

"Take a look at this- around where and when you came through, there was a minor electrical disturbance in the area. I've been checking it out, and there was anotherone at the same time: but this time it took out the power in a couple of blocks in Iowa City. I think we should start there." Castiel smiled.

"Great! Let's get going." Sam looked at him, incredulous.

"Dean, I just got here. I've been in the car two straight days and I need to rest! Can't be go first thing in the morning?" Castiel wondered how Dean would react to this. He wasn't entirely sure, but he did think that Dean would most likely put Sam's needs first.

"Alright, Sammy. I'm just concerned, that's all." Sam pulled a face and laughed.

"'Concerned'?" he said, using his fingers to draw quotation marks in the air. Castiel realised his mistake.

"Worried. He should have been able to contact us by now, and as he hasn't, I wonder if he's unable." Castiel winced internally at his phrasing, but it was too late to do anything about it now.

"He's an angel, Dean. I'm sure he's fine. Wait; he didn't get, like...more crazy in Purgatory, right?" Castiel couldn't help but laugh.

"He seemed better," he said, an idea occurring to him, "but he lost some of his...angel mojo." Sam nodded, frowning in thought.

"We'll find him, Dean; don't worry." He smiled. "So, want me to find the nearest bar?" Drinking; of course. That was exactly what Dean would do. Castiel just nodded. He wished he could think of an excuse not to go; but he couldn't come up with anything convincing. Deciding he needed to be alone, he stood up.

"I'm going to take a shower."

"Okay." Sam continued to search on his laptop, then as Castiel reached the door he called, "hey, Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm glad you're back. I missed you." Castiel smiled.

"Yeah, Sammy. Me too."

***

Castiel left the shower a while later, feeling better. He could see why humans liked them so much. He wrapped himself in a threadbare towel and picked his clothes up off the floor before he left the bathroom. Sam smiled at him as he left and darted in, locking the door behind him with a click. Castiel wandered towards the bed he’d claimed as his and dumped the clothes on top of it, wondering how long he was going to have to keep up this charade; when he heard an annoyed shout from the bathroom.

“Dean!” he heard the water go off and some muffled thuds, then Sam was stood in the doorway, clearly annoyed. “You used all the hot water!” It hadn’t occurred to Castiel that the water might be in finite amounts. He’d always just assumed it was always hot.

“I…uh…sorry?”

Sam sighed, exasperated, but clearly also unwilling to start an argument with his brother over something so trivial. “Just…don’t, next time, alright?”

“Of course. Apologies.” Sam laughed. “What?”

“Dean, you have officially spent too much time with Cas. You’re even starting to sound like him.”

Castiel laughed. “Sam, you have no idea.”

***

An hour later, Castiel was sat in a booth opposite Sam, drinking a beer. He found the taste rather more pleasing than he had done when he’d drunk it in his usual vessel. He theorised that he must have taken on Dean’s taste preferences when he started using Dean as a vessel. He particularly liked this theory because it meant that the familiar-yet-uncomfortable stirring he felt in his groin when his eyes passed over a blonde woman stood at the bar was all Dean, and nothing to do with him. It wasn’t that he’d been oblivious to sexual desire, it was just that usually it was a vague background thought; very easy to ignore. Now that he was in Dean’s body, however, he found the tightness in his pants very distracting. He also found that his eyes were constantly wandering of their own accord back towards that same blonde woman. With horror, he realised that he’d been appraising her body in a leering kind of way, and he was ashamed. He wanted to leave the bar- he hadn’t gone millennia without fornication to ‘fall from the wagon’ (as it were) now. Angels were strictly forbidden from engaging in such debauched behaviours. He knew, however, that in this situation, Dean wouldn’t leave. He knew that Dean would saunter up to the woman and charm her with his winning smile and easy confidence. He also knew that there was no way he’d be able to fake that.

Sam caught his lustful stares and turned around to check out who he’d been ogling. Having seen her, he laughed and shook his head.

“What’s so funny?” asked Castiel, annoyed.

“You! You never change,” Sam responded, still chuckling gently, “the second I saw her I knew you’d be taking her home.” Taking her home? For a few moments, Castiel pondered what exactly that meant- had she not enough money for transportation? Or was that a custom?- when he realised that Sam expected him to attempt to persuade this woman to copulate with him. Panic filled him. He needed an excuse why not, and he needed one quickly.

“I’d…rather not,” he said lamely, still frantically racking his brains for something, anything.

“Why not?!” asked Sam, studying him, “Dude, if you’re worrying about me or anything…don’t. Unless there was some hot vampire chick in Purgatory that you haven’t told me about or you finally consummated your major bromance with Cas, I know it’s been a while. So, go get her!” Castiel really started to panic at this. What could he say? He was still searching for an answer (and also wondering what a ‘bromance’ was and how exactly one consummated one), when Sam stood, dragged Castiel to his feet and said, “Stop feeling bad about me and for the love of God GO FUCK HER!” Reeling from Sam’s use of both blasphemy and foul language in the space of three seconds, Castiel stumbled forward as Sam gave him a small shove. Swallowing thickly, he concentrated on regulating his breathing. This wasn’t a part of Dean he’d particularly studied, finding it iniquitous. He stood at the bar and tried to lean against it with Dean’s relaxed stance as he ordered another beer- from what he understood, imbibing considerably too much alcohol was an integral part of the modern mating ritual. He knew that he was stood stiffly, but for some reason he couldn’t force his muscles to relax. The suppression of his angelic powers was still a massive inconvenience. As he handed over the requisite amount of money, he looked towards the blonde woman, and found that she was walking towards him, smiling. Taking a long swig of his beer to hide his nerves, he forced himself to smile at her.

“Hi!” she said brightly, coming to a swaying halt in front of him, “d’you come here often?” She laughed too loud, and Castiel realised that she was very drunk. Logically, he knew that to take advantage of her when she wasn’t in possession of her full faculties would be highly immoral; but his ‘Dean senses’ (as he was starting to call them) seemed to think that this was excellent. Dean was responding with heightened arousal, and Castiel was in equal parts disgusted and enormously tempted.

“I haven’t been here before. Have you?” Castiel worked to keep his tone casual, and forced another smile.

“No! I’ve never been to Seattle before!” she said, slurring her words a little.

“You seem to be enjoying yourself,” said Castiel, raising his eyebrows in a manner he hoped came across as mischievous. She laughed too loud again, so he took that as success.

“You’re funny!” she exclaimed, emphasising the second word by lightly shoving his chest. He laughed in an attempt to cover the jolt of desire that contact had sent through his body. He reminded himself that taking advantage of her would almost definitely result in a one-way ticket straight to hell, but Dean’s body didn’t seem to care too much. Indecision gripped him. Taking another huge gulp of beer, he suddenly found himself deciding to ignore his better judgement.

“Are you available later this evening?” It wasn’t until the words had already left his mouth that he realised what he’d done. She smiled and moved closer.

“Depends on what for,” she said, in what her alcohol-addled brain probably thought was a seductive tone. Castiel wanted to pause and think about what he was doing, but it was like his brain was shut out from making decisions about what his body did.

“For fornication…” There was a pause as she lifted her eyebrows in confusion.

“Forni-what?”

“Fornication,” he repeated; then, remembering what Dean had called it, he added, “you know…cloud-seeding.” As she continued to look nonplussed, he leant in conspiratorially and in a low voice, said, “copulation.” Suddenly, she slapped him.

“If you didn’t want to take me home you could have just said! You didn’t have to make fun of me or…or…” She looked around as she searched for the right word, “or…patricide me!”

Before he could stop himself, Castiel replied, “I think you mean ‘patronise’,” and she slapped him again, storming off in a huff mere seconds later. Face still smarting, he ordered another beer.

***

He got back to the motel at around four (though it would have been much earlier if he hadn’t lost his way. He still didn’t understand how humans found their way around without what Dean had called ‘angelic GPS’), and tried to enter the room quietly. After stumbling into the bedside table and knocking off the lamp, he heard Sam moan groggily and roll over. A hand reached out and slammed onto various parts of the table, looking to make contact with the clock. Eventually, its face lit up and Sam scowled.

“Dean, what the hell?” He rolled over and squinted at Dean’s figure silhouetted in the doorway. “Wait, you’re alone? What happened?”

“It did not work out.”

“Wait, you struck out?” Sam propped himself up on his elbows to regard Dean, confused. Castiel assumed he must be waiting for some sort of response from him.

“Yes, that’s a very funny use of pop culture references. Good one, Sammy.” Castiel laughed a strange laugh, then swayed a little and held onto the door for balance. Sam stared at him as though he’d lost his mind.

“Dean, if you didn’t go home with that girl, where have you been all this time?”

“On a bender!” he snapped, “my attempts to entice a woman into bed failed so I passed the evening drowning my sorrows.”

“Huh,” said Sam, laying back down, “alrighty then. Don’t you dare bitch to me in the morning about the hangover you’re definitely going to have.”

Castiel stumbled over to his bed, fell face-first onto it and passed out.

***

Castiel blinked groggily. He was vaguely aware of a sensation as though his limbs were bring stretched, and a wave of nausea passed over him. He opened his eyes and found Sam standing over him with an angel blade pressed to his throat. He tried to move away but Sam had tied him down.

“Sam-“ he began, but Sam cut him off.

“Cas, get out of Dean.” Cas? Sam knew?

“Wh…What? Sammy, I-“

“Don’t call me Sammy. Only Dean gets to call me that. Now, I’ll ask again- Castiel, get out of Dean!” Castiel thought about it for a moment, then decided to come clean.

“I can’t leave, Sam,” he said, speaking loudly over the top of Sam when he attempted to interrupt, “because my angelic powers are being suppressed. When we left Purgatory, I was in my vessel and Dean was fine, but then we came through and I was in Dean’s body and nobody else was there.”

After a long few seconds’ silence, Sam finally said, “So…Dean’s not…in his head?”

“No. Though many of his physical tastes and desired remain.” Understanding crossed Sam’s face.

“The blonde in the bar…” Castiel winced.

“You’re getting off topic…”

“Why did you lie to me, Cas? You could have just told me what had happened, why didn’t you?” Castiel paused, not entirely sure how to respond.

“I…didn’t want you to worry. I thought that having your brother’s physical body back minus his soul would be very difficult for you to handle, so I thought that I’d pretend to be Dean for a few days until we could locate your real brother. Clearly I was mistaken in my belief that I could be an adequate Dean.” Sam thought about this for a minute.

“I was still worried about you, you know, Cas.”

“It’s not the same and you know it.”

“Yeah…” Sam admitted, shifting around uncomfortably. “You’d gotta know this wasn’t going to work out, though, right?” Castiel frowned. “Oh, come on! You were never going to be a convincing Dean!”

“I wasn’t that bad!” Castiel bristled defensively.

“Dude, I knew you weren’t Dean within minutes.”

Castiel scoffed. “You say that now you already have the answers.”

“No, no, I knew! I just chalked it up to you having been in Purgatory so long. Eventually I worked it out.”

“How?”

Sam gave him his best bitchface. “Nobody has said ‘entice a woman into bed’ since 1925.” Castiel laughed.

“I must say, it will be a relief to not have to talk like Dean. I found it iniquitous.” Sam laughed a little, then looked sad. “Come on, Sam, untie me. Let’s go find Dean.”


End file.
